September 5, 2012

TIFF '12: A Royal Affair

En Kongelig Affære***/****directed by Nikolaj Arcel

by Angelo MureddaA
Royal Affair isn't
exactly Barry Lyndon,
but as period pieces go, it's surprisingly robust, the rare costume drama that
takes a genuine interest in how the unruly personalities of rulers and
politicians determine a nation's political outcomes as much as the ideologies
they represent. It doesn't seem so promising at first, beginning as it does with a title
card that sets the scene with ominous overtones. "It is the Age of
Enlightenment," we're told in the tasteful font of "Masterpiece Theatre", and while the
rest of Europe has gone through a massive philosophical and ethical shift with
respect to its perception of peasants and landed gentry, Denmark has remained
an outpost of the old, thanks in no small part to the conservative court that
pulls the strings of mad young King Christian (Mikkel Følsgaard, Best Actor
winner at Berlin). Enter his blushing new Welsh bride and our narrator,
Caroline (Alicia Vikander), a revolutionary intellect--her book collection
doesn't pass the Danish board of censors--who flounders in the country she now
rules until things are livened by Johann Friedrich Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen),
a German doctor and secret pamphleteer of the Enlightenment sent to bring sense
back to the erratic King.

The set-up is worryingly similar toThe King's Speech, but
director and co-writer Nikolaj Arcel, punching in a new weight class after his
clunky adaptation of Stieg Larrson's first Millennium book, isn't much interested
in Struensee's friendship with Christian, skipping right to the intrigue of
having a radical smuggled away at court, whispering revolutionary sentiment in
the impressionable sovereign's ear. While Struensee's romantic attachment to
Caroline, his political rise, and his inevitable decline all unfold in a
straightforward manner, with everyone marching on to his or her fate as
required, Arcel nicely draws his characters such that their ends feel like the
consequence of onscreen actions rather than mere accidents of historical
record. Struensee, for instance, must fall, savaged as a foreigner who insidiously
slipped himself between the Queen's sheets, but the suggestion here is that his
failure was largely one of temperament.

Mikkelsen, consequently, has quite a bit to do
here for the star of a historical epic, usually a thankless job. An academic with
a theoretical interest in the ideals of the philosophes, his Struensee
nevertheless has little use for actual people and is never seen engaging with
his subjects in anything other than a cursory manner once he comes to power by
proxy. There's something chilling about his miscalculated plea to his fellow
citizens that he is just like them, which rolls off his tongue rather haughtily
for a friend of the people. Strong as Mikkelsen is, though, it's Følsgaard who
steals the show as the pathetic sovereign, a creepy child who loves his dog
more than his wife, and wants nothing more than to be told what to do, then claim divine insight. Programme: Gala Presentation